NCSS Online Teachers' Library

NCSS has selected a collection of classroom activities, teaching ideas, and articles from Social Education, Middle Level Learning, and Social Studies and the Young Learner. Browse the collection, or search by historical period and grade level using the search function below.
(Collections on other disciplines are under development.)

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--Pat Watson
Census in Schools, www.census.gov/schools, is the official site of the Census Bureau’s K-12 program. The "History Timeline" is a great resource. Click on the "History and Pop Culture" icon to find it, as described in the accompanying article "Interdisciplinary Activities Using Census in Schools," by Janice Jefferson. Then see images and facts about Americans as they lived and worked over two centuries. Both brief articles are linked here:

--Pat Watson
Census in Schools, www.census.gov/schools, is the official site of the Census Bureau’s K-12 program. The "History Timeline" is a great resource. Click on the "History and Pop Culture" icon to find it, as described in the accompanying article "Interdisciplinary Activities Using Census in Schools," by Janice Jefferson. Then see images and facts about Americans as they lived and worked over two centuries. Both brief articles are linked here:

The second (by Allison Helm, Kristin Pierce, and Michele Galloway) suggested placing 12 clues (each accompanied by a reading from Lewis's journal, 1803-1806) throughout the room, then inviting students to examine, record, and hypothesize about what they observe and read.

--Luis Martínez Fernández
Approaching the encounter between Europe and the Americas as an intellectual rather than a physical discovery enables students to go beyond memorization to gain an understanding of Medieval and Renaissance ways of acquiring knowledge.
* http://publications.socialstudies.org/se/7701/77011307.pdf

--Rodney Kite-Powell
Two key maps that show the “known world” from the European perspective before Christopher Columbus’s voyages illustrate the knowledge of intellectuals of that period and reveal tales of exploration, conflict, and change.
* http://publications.socialstudies.org/se/7701/77011314.pdf

--Stephen J. Thornton
Standard accounts of U.S. history present a chronology of events that begins in the East and moves west. An alternative approach traces Spanish exploration and settlement in what is now the American Southwest.
* http://publications.socialstudies.org/se/7701/77011319.pdf